A major unexplored area in the field of international politics is the consequences of major war for members of the international system in terms of power lost or gained. This paper explores these shifts of power among neutrals, winners, and losers as a result of these wars, using a sample of 32 cases and time series analysis. The findings register unexpected but systematic patterns after major conflicts; while winners and neutrals are affected marginally by the conflict, losers' powers are at first eroded. Over the long run (15–20 years), though, the effects of the loss dissipate; losers accelerate their recovery and soon resume antebellum status. It is this phenomenon that the authors call the phoenix factor.

Many professional observers have come to the conclusion that, despite denials and technical problems whose solutions are not publicly known, Israel already has nuclear weapons or has completed all but the final steps in their fabrication. It is also widely believed that one or more Arab states will come into atomic possession within a 10 to 15 year time frame. The present analysis explores the consequences of the establishment of a regional mini-balance of terror. The central hypothesis is that apocalyptic images and doomsday visions have been accepted too readily and out of proportion to the arguments that are given, and that a stable system of mutual deterrence may be viable in the Middle East and may make a positive contribution to the process of political settlement. Problems of rationality, credibility, second-strike force survivability, escalation, tactical nuclear weapons, accidents, permissive action links, terrorism, preventive war, and the disclosure of nuclear weapons possession are discussed.

This paper contributes to the substantive and methodological discussion of the issues concerning the causes of cabinet instability through analysis of data from Indian state politics. The focus of the analysis is on explaining the duration of Indian state governments in days with variables measuring the degree of fragmentation and cohesion in the party system, the composition of the cabinet, the characteristics of the opposition, and the role of ideological differences. A substantial amount of the variation in the durability of coalition governments is explained with variables that measure the degree of party system institutionalization and the extent of political opportunism, but ideological factors do not explain much of the differences in durability of governments. It is also found that none of the measures used can explain much of the variation in one-party majority governments for which, it is argued, explanations must be sought that focus on leadership skill and on relationships between leaders and factions in a dominant party.

In Taiwan, a national elite socialized to measure the behavior of others (but not its own behavior) against extremely high standards of morality finds itself offended by the apparently immoral behavior of local electoral politicians. With reference to similar situations in other developing countries, this article describes how the attitudes of Taiwan's national elite toward the political morality of others developed and why the electoral politicians act in a manner offensive to the elite's attitudes. As a postscript, the article discusses why the national elite has checked its desire to do away with Taiwan's offensive fledgling electoral system and expanded its scope instead.

In several highly mobilized Third World societies, rising levels of working-class political activism seem to have encouraged the development of political movements which are both popular and authoritarian. This popular authoritarianism melds intensive political mobilization of previously excluded social sectors with political structures which severely limit these groups' ability to affect public policy. Much of the research on popular authoritarianism has attempted to explain the phenomenon by identifying the socioeconomic determinants of popular-authoritarian electoral behavior. In an effort to clarify the relative merit of contending explanations, this study uses data from the prototypic case of Argentine Peronism to test six common hypotheses and then to construct a model which optimizes the explanatory ability of five major socioeconomic variables. The results indicate that an area's rate of industrial growth and the size of its working-class population account for more than four-fifths of the variation in Peronisi electoral behavior that can be attributed to socioeconomic variables.

In this study formal spatial models are applied to cross-sectional analysis of district results on the second ballot of French legislative elections. A model of probabilistic spatial voting better accounts for the data than either standard “ecological” models or a model of deterministic spatial voting. There are three substantive findings concerning voter behavior. First, the adjustment of voters to external information can be largely viewed as a shift in the spatial (Left-Right) distribution of voters. This shift, plus decisions by parties and candidates as to which districts parties will contest, determines the first ballot outcome. In arriving at second ballot choices, voters then appear to utilize decision rules that have a substantial degree of temporal stability. A second and related finding is that the second ballot can be reasonably accounted for by a single Left-Right dimension. Third, in those districts with three or more candidates on the second ballot, there may be substantial strategic voting with voters switching from candidates close to their ideal points but unlikely to win to more distant candidates who are more likely to win. The existence of strategic voting is suggested by the finding that models based solely on spatial preferences perform well for two-candidate districts, but less well for three- or four-candidate districts.

This study examines postwar patterns in macroeconomic policies and outcomes associated with left-and right-wing governments in capitalist democracies. It argues that the objective economic interests as well as the subjective preferences of lower income and occupational status groups are best served by a relatively low unemployment-high inflation macroeconomic configuration, whereas a comparatively high unemployment-low inflation configuration is compatible with the interests and preferences of upper income and occupational status groups. Highly aggregated data on unemployment and inflation outcomes in relation to the political orientation of governments in 12 West European and North American nations are analyzed revealing a low unemployment-high inflation configuration in nations regularly governed by the Left and a high unemployment-low inflation pattern in political systems dominated by center and rightist parties. Finally, time-series analyses of quarterly postwar unemployment data for the United States and Great Britain suggests that the unemployment rate has been driven downward by Democratic and Labour administrations and upward by Republican and Conservative governments. The general conclusion is that governments pursue macroeconomic policies broadly in accordance with the objective economic interests and subjective preferences of their class-defined core political constituencies.

This paper analyzes Vincent Ostrom's major work, The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, which he offers as providing paradigmatic direction for public administration and political science. The analysis urges caution as to that theory's status, especially from five analytic perspectives. Basically, attention is directed at the methodology or mode of inquiry associated with Ostrom's grounding of his argument in public choice theory, with special attention to the role of values. The adequacy of major assumptions of Ostrom's argument as descriptions of reality also is evaluated. Moreover, the critical lack of content in several key concepts is established. In addition, the analysis shows how opposite and simultaneous courses of action are implied by the argument. Finally, attention is directed at how Ostrom's argument can lead to unexpected consequences, even some that are opposite those effects Ostrom intends.

There has been considerable interest in the development of theories of public policy formation, but theoretical efforts to date have not demonstrated adequate recognition of the distinctive qualities of the dependent variable as a focus of research. Facets of public policy are far more difficult to study systematically than most other phenomena investigated empirically by political scientists. Our attempt to test hypotheses with some rigor demonstrated that public policy becomes troublesome as a research focus because of inherent complexity–specifically because of the temporal nature of the process, the multiplicity of participants and of policy provisions, and the contingent nature of theoretical effects. We use examples of policy making taken from the case study literature to show concretely how such complexity makes it essentially impossible to test apparently significant hypotheses as they are presented by Lowi, Dahl, Banfield, and others. Our effort here is to enhance theoretical development by carefully specifying and clarifying the major shortcomings and pointing out the apparent directions of remedy.

This article, drawing on recent studies of class consciousness and powerlessness explained in individual versus system level terms, develops and analyzes an operational measure of “power consciousness.” Power consciousness is defined as a person's evaluation of his or her political power position and his or her explanation of the causes of any inadequacies or advantages perceived in this position. The operational measure of power consciousness arrays responses to two items on political power satisfaction (one of them open-ended) along a dimension which ranges from satisfaction, to dissatisfaction ascribed to personal failures of the respondent, to dissatisfaction explained in terms of problems with the political system. Survey data are utilized for a comparative analysis of whites' and blacks' scores on the power consciousness measure. The following topics receive detailed attention: the place of power consciousness in the matrix of power measures; its relationship to background factors, especially level of education; its relationship to indicators of political discontent; and the impact of power consciousness on levels and styles of political behavior. The analysis is followed by suggestions for the development of future work in this area.

The incumbent vs. system affect distinction is basic in the conceptualization of political support. It is based on the premise that system affect is a more important antecedent of aggressive political behavior than incumbent affect. The data reported here show that it is possible to distinguish incumbent from system affect empirically, and also theoretically important to make the incumbent-system distinction. Measures especially sensitive to incumbent affect correlate differently with ideology than does a measure especially sensitive to system affect. Byvariate correlations between measures of incumbent affect and a measure of aggressive political behavior are shown to be either spurious or indirect, due to the fact that incumbent affect is correlated with what appears to be a more powerful and direct antecedent of aggressive political behavior, namely, system affect. The theory behind the incumbent-system distinction is expressed in four propositions. In general, the data conform to it, but each prediction is qualified according to whether ideology and community context are inhibitory or facilitative.